40 to 70% of Americans will likely be infected over the next 12 months. Average death rate is 3% but ours could be as high as 7% (cf. Italy). That's 4 million to 16 million Americans dying from covid19 in the next year. That's 6 to 26 times as many people as will die from cancer.
It's almost guaranteed that you will have someone that you know die from this disease. Very best case, assuming we have a lower death rate than anywhere else and only 1% die, it will still kill more people than cancer and 1.3 million Americans will die over the next year.
Bad news is that the U.S. is basically guaranteed to experience the worst-case scenario. We aren't prepared for a pandemic, don't have the resources needed, and already are ahead of the curve in terms of spread compared to other nations.
10 to 20% of infected people will require hospitalization. If we don't curb the rate of spread, the hospitals will be overwhelmed and unable to keep up. People will start dying of other diseases and injuries because they can't get treatment as a result of overwhelmed hospitals.
We're projected to run out of hospital beds within the next few months:
statnews.com/2020/03/10/sim…
statnews.com/2020/03/10/sim…
We're also projected to run out of ventilators, which are desperately needed for treating hospitalized covid19 patients:
npr.org/sections/healt…
npr.org/sections/healt…
Also, see this related thread:
